Hillary: ‘I Had A Different Strategy’ On Syria When I Was Secretary of State

Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on Russia’s airstrikes in Syria, saying she “had a different strategy” as secretary of state, but that “I can’t sit here today and tell you that if my strategy had been followed, we’d be in a different place” in an interview for MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation,” a portion of which was broadcast on Wednesday’s “MSNBC Live.”

Hillary stated, “You know, Al, I had a different strategy, back when I was secretary of state. I can’t sit here today and tell you that if my strategy had been followed, we’d be in a different place, because this has so much of a dynamic of its own. What I believed then, is that Assad was the principle threat, because his bombarding, and his ruthless behavior toward his own people, was going to create more terrorists, it was going to create refugees, it was going to destabilize neighboring countries. All that has come to pass, but where we are today, which is the president’s view, that we need to build up the Iraqi army, we cannot take back positions from ISIS, because we’re not going to put troops on the ground, and we should not. Whenever any of the Republicans say we need 10,000 American troops on the ground, I think that demonstrates how little they really understand, and the lessons that we should have learned over the last 15 years.”